“Cuba and the Cuban revolution will continue fighting and resisting even if we should wake up one day to the news, which we hope would never occur, that a great civil conflict has arisen in the USSR and even that the USSR has fallen apart.
“The revolutionary movement is going through difficulties. We cannot even say that supplies, which have been arriving in the socialist camp like clockwork for the past thirty years, will continue arriving with that reliability and punctuality. It is possible that in the future we may have to continue working and exerting ourselves and making miracles.”
– Fidel Castro, July 26, 1989
I remember reading a NYT article in 1993 saying that even if the Cubans could figure out a way to stem the free fall of the special period, it would require at least 5 years to begin to recover, and that the Cuban people would never have the patience for that. It gleefully looked forward to the imminent demise of the revolution. Thankfully, the Cuban people went on to show the world what they and their revolution is made of.
ReplyDeleteIncredible. How didn't the Fidelismo predicted the collapse earlier? Would it have moved to smooth the blow about to come? Why didn't he left in 2000, when the worse had gone? Waiting to know the president after Clinton? I guess we can't have the cake and eat it. It is too much to ask to human nature that the very same qualities that allow Fidel to 'invent' and lead the Cuban Revolution would not do a lot to weaken that very same creation. Each extraordinary achievement has had a disastrous counterpart.
ReplyDeleteOmar